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Games with programmable AI

I used to play Ragnarok Online. I quite liked it, but the severe grind (amongst other things) got on my nerves and I stopped playing. Thing is, one of the things I liked most about it was the homunculus system: the Alchemist class could create a pet that followed them around and fought for them, and whose AI was completely programmable.

By "programmable" I don't mean there was a window with tick boxes that said things like "attack on sight" or "heal when below [ ]% hp"... I mean you had to open up notepad and write that shit from scratch in LUA. The default AI was intentionally made stupid, inconvenient, and prone to committing ban-worthy acts to encourage you to reprogram it. Can't program? Haha, let's hope someone who does has posted their AI for download on a fansite somewhere, noob!

It was awesome. I learnt a great deal about programming thanks to that system, though I quit the game in frustration long before I got the chance to tackle a rather ambitious project: an AI that could learn, akin to the Creature from Black and White. I doubt I could have achieved it, but I wanted to try! And I still do!

So my question is, H/A, are there any other games featuring a pet whose AI can be (legally) programmed from scratch?

While you eat, let's have a conversation about the nature of consent.

Lieberkuhn on June 2010

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This is not actually an answer to your question, so I guess this is more "advice" than "help" by the standards of the H/A forum -- but if you're that interested in programming game AI, you should consider finding a friend to help you design, program and distribute a game.

Thanks for the ideas, folks. They seem a bit too ambitious, though... I'm still very much a noob to programming, and I liked the narrow focus that a single creature's AI within an established game offered me.

I'm kind of tempted to return to RO, but I'm not sure it's worth it. :/

I still play WoW, though, and I've heard its player-generated addons are pretty powerful. I understand they're strictly an interface thing, but I wonder if I could create an intelligent pet of sorts using that?

Yeah, suggesting someone program a whole game is kind of silly. There was an old school game, called Robot Battle or something where you had to program the robots actions, but I don't remember if it was pure programming or using logic blocks.

Yeah, suggesting someone program a whole game is kind of silly. There was an old school game, called Robot Battle or something where you had to program the robots actions, but I don't remember if it was pure programming or using logic blocks.

Robot Odyssey.

I loved the shit out of that game.

Also, a bit more simplified, but you might want to look into FFXII or Dragon Age, you can program party member behavior with a series of If-Then statements.

I played a demo for a game called Colobot several years ago where you got to order some robots around using a C++ like language. I do wish there were something like this with a broader scope, like spaceships or something.

But I would submit that these are probably not worth $68 and $108, respectively, which is what they seem to be going for now.

Even older than those, I think in the pre-hard drive days, Origin also made a game called Omega where you had to program your cybertank in a BASIC-like language. It had a giant manual, and was pretty great.

Also, a bit more simplified, but you might want to look into FFXII or Dragon Age, you can program party member behavior with a series of If-Then statements.

I had considered those, but if I understand correctly, all you can really do is arrange a set of pre-defined statements into a pre-defined structure? You can't, say, give your character the ability to recognise things they've seen before, or tackle a problem differently if they failed the first time?

Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 allowed you to create your own AI systems from scratch in the editors. I've done a lot of work on NWScript personally (which is a lot like C), and it's a lot of fun to create behaviors like Blink Dog attack routines and self-destructing Goblins Suicide Bombers and whatnot.

Starcraft 2's editing suite is supposed to be incredibly robust - I don't know if it's programmable but if you want a deep and nuanced control in the scripting of AI events, it could do you pretty well.

Robocode is a game/framework where you can write code for a robot in Java or .NET. Then, your robot fights against other people's robots! They run huge amounts of games between robots to determine whose is best. It's pretty fun, but meant to be educational.

I played a demo for a game called Colobot several years ago where you got to order some robots around using a C++ like language. I do wish there were something like this with a broader scope, like spaceships or something.

This game actually seems like it could have potential. Has anyone played the full game?

I've got good news and bad news about 6th level, That Guy. The good news is that Forbiddance spell allows you to prevent enemies different alignment from entering a consecrated area, which is actually useful! The bad news is that the only other new sixth level spell makes lunch for everybody. Guess which one the party is going to expect you to cast.